What Pyromancer skills are actually good?

[Caridor]

So I made a pyromancer and I'm level 30 and I've gone into being a pure soldier with a heavy bolter. The only pyromancer talents I've picked up is the one that boosts crit chance when you hurt something and the one that melts armour on hit.

Burning just seems so pointless when you have a 16 shot burst, 150 ballistics skill and crit for 30 damage or more. Even if I threw myself into the pyromancer, I can't see where the damage comes from. Spreading the fire seems more trouble than it's worth to deal, what 40 damage on a crit at the end of a turn?

[Pixie1001]

Yeah, it has good talents to combine with telekinesis, but DoT damage seems really bad in this game where if you aren't killing an enemy you spend action points to attack, you're doing it wrong.

Maybe if you equipped everyone else with flamers, the big beams and stuff that scale with burn stacks could outscale heavy bolters? Although I kinda doubt it...

[Aranador]

It is definitely difficult for anything to compete with a heavy bolter burst.

I am trying a twin flamer specced pyro, using a flamer burst, then another, get get maximum people on fire, then detonating one with fire storm. That is actually quite a lot of damage over time, but, a heavy bolter would have delivered that damage up front. I usually play with enemy health bars doubled, which helps make the pyro more useful, but, heavy bolter . . . And lets face it, my assassin is absolutely crushing bosses - there is just no time for damage over time to do it's thing.

[Caridor]

Aranador lähetti viestin:

It is definitely difficult for anything to compete with a heavy bolter burst.

I am trying a twin flamer specced pyro, using a flamer burst, then another, get get maximum people on fire, then detonating one with fire storm. That is actually quite a lot of damage over time, but, a heavy bolter would have delivered that damage up front. I usually play with enemy health bars doubled, which helps make the pyro more useful, but, heavy bolter . . . And lets face it, my assassin is absolutely crushing bosses - there is just no time for damage over time to do it's thing.

Yeah, I'm lvl 30 and my eldar sniper is critting for 400+ with on of her abilities. I kinda wish I knew what the boss on the forge world did but I guess maybe that's for a hard mode playthrough.

[16/13]

I guess the problem is that you cannot trade burst dmg to dot dmg. Mainly on high difficulties you can loose a fight if you wont kill a couple of enemies in the first turn. It's simply easier to play have archmilitants+officers+Idira

Pyro sounds cool but acts poor

[Maestro Rugosa]

Definitely curious to hear about effective Pyro builds. It's always felt pretty unsatisfying to have my magical fire-starter armed with sniper rifles.

[Caridor]

Maestro Rugosa lähetti viestin:

Definitely curious to hear about effective Pyro builds. It's always felt pretty unsatisfying to have my magical fire-starter armed with sniper rifles.

I've heard you can make a decent build with a warrior, adding fire damage to melee strikes.

[Marec]

Caridor lähetti viestin:

So I made a pyromancer and I'm level 30 and I've gone into being a pure soldier with a heavy bolter. The only pyromancer talents I've picked up is the one that boosts crit chance when you hurt something and the one that melts armour on hit.

Burning just seems so pointless when you have a 16 shot burst, 150 ballistics skill and crit for 30 damage or more. Even if I threw myself into the pyromancer, I can't see where the damage comes from. Spreading the fire seems more trouble than it's worth to deal, what 40 damage on a crit at the end of a turn?

You already have one of the strongest builds, the heavy bolter archmilitant, there's not much that can do more damage.
But a pyro psyker is by no means weak. With the right talent/class setup, your dmg can get insanely high too. It`s just more about synergies.
Fortress World with Never stop believing and high wp will almost always grant you a bonus attack
An operative grants:
Exploits will boost your dmg a lot (5x per bonus % dmg increas + 10% with each exploit)
Together with talents like Tide of excellence (+1 flat dmg increase and 2% pen with each triggered exploit ) or Tactical knowledge with improved tactics (+ int bonus flat dmg and +number of removed exploits) or sharpshooter ( per bonus BS and int bonus/2 dmg for every 5 cells between targets) you will hit in early act 2 without items for over a 100dmg with your ignite
Bountyhunter with Savour the Kill can give you 3 additional turns
Assassin will further improve the dmg with its weakspot/ lethality mechanics

Soldier Archmilitant has a lot less to improve your dmg
Run and gun for an additional attack, reveal in slaughter for a small bs increase with wildfire an additional bonus attack and the versatility bonus dmg. However versatility doesn`t work well with psykers because your psyker powers won`t increase your stack count.
If you want your soldier pyro as a ranged psyker you could try going for master tactician
Press the advantage is a great % dmg increase
Linchpin/ dawn of victory/ against all odds will grant you your tactical advantages
Inspire for flat dmg increase
Btw with enough Momentum generation Orchestrated Firestorm becomes viable

Edit:
Ok, I tested Soldier Master Tactician and it`s stronger than expected.
Concentrated Fire improves the Firestorm dmg
Tenderise is a small but needed flat dmg increase
If you want to cheese the game Camaraderie is great
Inspire flat dmg increase is a great dmg boost.

[[CA]deusex2]

Yeah, when compared with the rest of the powers/classes, pyro seems lackluster.

That being said, the way I found mine to be usable, was by turning it into a super-tanky punching bag, with tons of armor.

That way, whenever my pyro gets hit, he damages every enemy near him, while receiving 0 damage.

I, then, went and picked sanctic power, to keep buffing resolve and shield of the emperor, to get even more armor, along with hammer of the emperor, to deal decent damage, while soaking in all the damage.

[BlankMinded/Rovie]

Lots of pyro skills are good depending on how you want to play and build it.
Fire within is notably quite strong and very flexible, and so is Backdraft (backdraft can work with telepath powers too).

I'm playing an "exclusive" ranged pyromancer, and it feels pretty good to me, see build
2 below. It worked early on too, which I have seen some people complain about.

Here are 5 build ideas using Pyromancy:
1) a weapon wielding burst fire arch militant using the pyro passives to ramp up damage
2) bonus damage aoe burst via operative, my current and preferred build
3) a dot crit damage build centered around inflame (comes online later)
4) melee pyromancer - I don't really know what archetypes to use
5) mix pyro and other psyker schools like telepath for the aoe psychic assault + backdraft combo. Doesn't require burning effect.

In build 1, you ignore the pyro abilities, taking the blazing inferno, fire within and (optional) melting armour talents. Since crit rate over 100% becomes crit damage, you can ramp up your crit damage really fast as a solder arch militant this way. Sure, you don't feel like much of a pyro, and there's a "Tax" to getting access to those talents, but it is very strong.

In build 2, you play an operative. You use tactical knowledge to get flat bonuses to ignite, firestorm, molten beam and BACKDRAFT! You don't need willpower or psy rating early on. You can even use weapons like a las gun if enemy far away.

You can take grenadier if you want and throw a fire grenade to ignite foes before using firestorm. Grenade damage is increased by tactical knowledge, including the fire left by a fire grenade. Backdraft triggers for each instance of damage from an aoe like a grenade, molten beam or firestorm so you get huge aoe burst, but backdraft can also hit corpses which sucks.

Pyro Talents you want are backdraft, fire within, second sight. Psychic barrage and Sharpshooter (operative) are okay too but not needed. Things that give more exploits are good too. Tides of excellence helps ramp damage too, but only adds +1 damage regardless of # of exploit stacks on enemy, making it aoe oriented.

You can take either bounty hunter for savour the kill granting extra turns for more tactical knowledge and Never stop shooting (fortress world talent), or Assassin since psychic powers can proc openings. I prefer bounty hunter. Assassin can ramp up lethality super fast though via lethality heightens + direct calculation + backdraft nonsense.

Build 3 you could probably play a soldier or operative. Soldier would be good for run and gun for double inflame later on. I think this build probably feels the worst early on since the thing you "want" to do doesn't happen until you get Psy Rating 2 for inflame. Early game would probably focus around crits on aoe attacks, maybe using flamers or burst fire.

Sparks of greater flame, blazing inferno, fire within, maybe grenadier again? Group up enemies, chuck a grenade, start inferno spamming. In theory, if enough enemies are on fire, every use of inferno crits 8 times or more, giving you another free inferno.

Build 4: set yourself on fire for relentless blaze + orchestrate fire combo, walk into groups of enemies and proc burning blood by using psy powers, and deal fire damage with your melee attacks. You can probably find a bunch of builds like this online, warrior vanguard could be interesting for taunt + parry counterattacks.

Hope these ideas help you out.

[Blarker]

IMO, the majority of the pyro skills and talents are good and have uses. For your build though...? The melt armor and crit chance ones, that you already have, and possibly molten beam in order to armor shred a lot before you burst. Most of pyro doesn't mesh crazy well with someone specced into being a burst fire gunner. There are, however, plenty of other ways to use the skills with high effectiveness.

I myself in my game run a melee pyro, and I love it. Orchestrate flames is absolutely amazing. For whatever reason, the on hit fire damage applies twice, and also gets to benefit from your various flat and percent damage boosts to your attack, so even without doing anything fancy I'm basically triple dipping on any bonuses and doing 3x damage on every hit. If I start to go out of my way, however? Force sword psychic attack adds another instance of damage, and it procs backdraft, which can hit twice off of this one attack for whatever reason. Add on other fun stuff like the psy focus amulet, and I can get get like 8 instances of damage from one singular melee attack. Stuff like that. You can just keep on adding more and more onto one singular attack and it starts to get pretty funny.

Because I am on fire and in melee, firestorm can just be a free source of casual aoe. Not nearly as good as just hitting people, but still a respectable area around you for not much AP cost. Can also spread a lot of fire around a crowd if you open by throwing a fire grenade into a crowd then firestorm one of those targets.

Inflame is a bit lackluster in my opinion, but if you have free AP it is still a bit more free damage if you did use something like firestorm. Or any other burning target, like if someone used a flamer or threw a fire grenade. Just some free extra autohit damage for 1 ap, even if I would only choose this after I've locked in all the other skills I want.

Molten beam, I havent gotten to do much damage. But it is good at armor shred. If you need a source of it, then here you go.

Incinerate can be pretty fun, used right. If you throw around a bit of firestorm, flamer, or fire grenades around, you can just start zapping singular targets for pretty respectable damage....not fantastic damage, though, but still ok.

The pyo staff is also pretty cool. It fires off a volley of fire bullets in a burst, the number of which scales with the number of burning targets. These fireballs can also crit, and get boosted by area attack boosts and the like, so you can definitely do fun stuff like get a whole crowd on fire, then pull the staff out to do a huge burst across a crowd or delete a higher value target.

In the end, I wouldn't look at this stuff and think to yourself 'But I can just burst fire them instead', because yeah of course you could. Soldier/AM specced into burst fire / heavy guns is pretty busted and silly. But if you wanted to make a build with a heavier focus on being a pyro work, there are definitely multiple ways you can go about making that happen and it is still very viable.

You can ignore the dot talent, though, no matter what your build is. Cool idea if combat in this game didn't move so fast, but as is, it's just a waste of a talent slot.

[Sin317]

My main is a Pyro/Assassin and he is really good. The Thing with Pyromancy is, it ramps up. Every turn, you make more damage, more often (tm). I also have Argenta running around with a flamer, turning everybody into torches, which I can then damage over and over. It goes up really high, really fast. But it's not a Alpha/Burst build, for sure.

[Sin317]

Here's how I finished Act 3 Boss, fitting, I guess :) (Daring Difficulty)
https://youtu.be/NDgIJBcMHi4

[✧Starshadow Melody✧]

I tend to use Ignite+Orchestrate Flames as a sort of Kaioken/Power Within, and Pyromancer seems to have some talents that help crit builds. Using a Warrior/Arch Militant- I'm guessing that Arch Militant's Heroic Act might make it easier to pour on the ignites, I haven't gotten it yet.

[Revan619]

Necroing an old post as I'm running one now.

So far death world warrior going into arch militant. Having fun with axes. Endure for temp HP, setting yourself on fire then smashing everything.

Origin gives ignite. From there I picked up: burning blood, Orchestrate Flames, Relentless Blaze, Body of Flames, firestorm and inflamed. Working towards molten beam

Use endure then orchestrate flames on top of ignite so you don't put the fire out. Then use abilities like firestorm or beam to spread out some aoes. All your melee hits get extra fire damage and give thorns damage when people attack you.

Act 1 I'm out damaging the companions especially when using warrior heroic action. Will have to see if it drops off in act 2 and what the gap looks like as others get further in.

[Razer]

Revan619 lähetti viestin:

Necroing an old post as I'm running one now.

So far death world warrior going into arch militant. Having fun with axes. Endure for temp HP, setting yourself on fire then smashing everything.

Origin gives ignite. From there I picked up: burning blood, Orchestrate Flames, Relentless Blaze, Body of Flames, firestorm and inflamed. Working towards molten beam

Use endure then orchestrate flames on top of ignite so you don't put the fire out. Then use abilities like firestorm or beam to spread out some aoes. All your melee hits get extra fire damage and give thorns damage when people attack you.

Act 1 I'm out damaging the companions especially when using warrior heroic action. Will have to see if it drops off in act 2 and what the gap looks like as others get further in.

If you're running psyker isn't it better to run vanguard instead of arch militant? Can build up a lot of resolve through that archetype. Way more than anything else. And a lot more defense. Plus better if you want to utilize Sword of Faith, but that's rather situational.